Green Party candidate David Kulma attended a forum where retired Goldman Sachs executive Archie Parnell and two other Democrats addressed Rock Hill Rising.

March 15th in Rock Hill South Carolina a group of citizens took their virtual community to the “real world” by hosting a gathering of three contenders for the Democratic Party nomination in SC Congressional District 5. The seat will be decided in a special election to be held June 20th. The opening was created when Mick Mulvaney resigned the seat to take a place in the Trump administration.

The event was sponsored by Rock Hill Rising at a local outlet of a small regional coffee house chain, Amelie’s Bakery. The three Democrats had been invited to address the group, one of dozens of Internet based activist groups across the state which sprung up in response to the Trump victory last November.

Three Democratic candidates, Les Murphy, Alexis Frank and Archie Parnell were invited to offer the group their views. David Kulma, The South Carolina Green Party nominee, attended after securing a ticket to the event. Kulma, a Winthrop University Adjunct Professor of Music for the past five years, will address Rock Hill Rising at their next regularly scheduled meeting at their invitation. Kulma listened, took notes, and spoke with organizers of the event.

Parnell, the best financed of the three, served twenty years as an executive at Goldman Sachs as well as a ten year stint as a tax attorney for Exxon Mobil.

“When I listened to Alexis Frank I thought she was fired up and ready to go.” Kulma said. “She wasn’t getting into many specifics but she was passionate and a good speaker.”

Les Murphy, a former Marine who discussed the difficulties of returning to civilian life after service also spoke.

But Parnell was the person of the moment in that room tonight.

“He seemed to project confidence. He had more applause and laugh lines. It was clear that he had spent a good deal of time being coached. He presented himself well.” said Kulma.

Liz Smith-Anderson of Rock Hill had submitted a question which was rejected by the sponsors. “I just wanted to know if the candidates think this is a Christian nation, why or why not. A big part of the Trump agenda is driven by fanatical people who don’t understand our nation’s history.” she said.

The Kulma campaign was launched only a week and a half ago, but the campaign is said to be building steam already. In most Democratic and Republican congressional races $2500 checks are common. But this “people powered” campaign has just broken past it’s first $1000 fundraising barrier.

“We don’t take PAC money, we don’t take corporate money, so we must ask for worker’s money, as painful as that is.” Kulma concluded.

A total of 15 candidates from of South Carolina’s ballot qualified parties have filed. Seven Republicans, three Democrats, an equal number of Libertarians, and a single candidate each have filed for the Green and American Party nominations. One of the Libertarians has also filed to seek the Constitution Party nod.

Leaders of the Green Party of the United States have congratulated Alexander Van der Bellen, the former leader of the Green Party in Austria, on his election as president. Van der Bellen ran as an independent candidate with Green Party support and financial backing.

GPUS Co-Chair Bahram Zandi, who also co-chairs the party’s International Committee, said, “Alexander Van der Bellen’s victory is inspiring for Greens everywhere and for all those who care about the environment, democracy, and justice. We’re especially pleased to see that he defeated a right-wing anti-immigrant extremist in a close race.”

U.S. Greens encouraged Mr. Van der Bellen to continue opposing dangerous trade pacts like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and to fight for the rights of working people and against austerity and NATO belligerence.

The Times wrote, “In a Wednesday statement, the Green Party slammed the ‘Nader spoiler’ allegation, referring to it as a ‘baseless Democratic Party propaganda myth,'” blaming Al Gore’s 2000 “defeat on a series of factors. … The party has urged supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Bernard Sanders to cross over to the Green candidate in November. Polls show as many as 25 percent of the Vermont senator’s backers say they would not vote for Ms. Clinton, the former secretary of state.”

With Hillary Clinton closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination, there is increasing coverage of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein emerging as a November alternative.

The Hill says the Green Party “suddenly has a chance to make an impact in the presidential election, with polls showing that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are set to be the most unpopular nominees in modern times.” Stein “told The Hill that the likelihood of Trump and Clinton being the major-party nominees ‘creates a very propitious situation for the American people to actually have some choices.’ She insisted that the majority of people backing Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, are doing so in order to keep Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, out, rather than out of any real love for the former secretary of State and her policies.”

The Los Angeles Times says that while “the Green Party harbors few illusions about winning the White House,” if “even a small portion of [Bernie] Sanders voters cast ballots for Stein, it could prove transformative for the organization.” Stein said, “This is going to be a huge game-changer for the Green Party. We have seen many former Greens coming back, and new Greens coming in that have been dismayed by the treatment of the Sanders campaign at the hands of the Democratic Party.”

Salon writes that Stein said in a recent interview, “People are told over and over: don’t vote your values, vote your fears. But what we got was everything was everything we were afraid of.”

A letter to the editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette promotes Stein as an option, while Mic writes that a voter who plans to back Stein in November debated ex-President Bill Clinton for half an hour this week.

Truthout interviews Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein about her appeal to supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders and other voters disenchanted with expected major-party nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Stein said, “I think the Green Party and my campaign [are] ‘Plan B’ for Bernie supporters because the Democratic Party is the opposite of everything they’ve been working for and building for the last eight months or so, and to simply be dumped into Hillary’s campaign right now is kind of unthinkable. The sabotage of Bernie’s campaign by the Democratic Party really makes the point about why we need an independent party, because it has shown that it is very hard to have a revolutionary campaign inside of a counterrevolutionary party.”

She said of Sanders, “Bernie has been quite clear that he considers third parties a big liability, but I think that’s kind of old-school thinking here that looks to the Democrats of the New Deal, which we don’t have anymore. I’m hoping Bernie is still a living, thinking person who can actually learn with experience and maybe his thinking will change here, but it’s clear where his revolution will go inside the Democratic Party, and that is to a graveyard. The party does not tolerate reform, and there have been many efforts to do so.”

Stein said in an interview posted at Red Alert Politics, “All the reasons you were told you had to vote for the lesser of two evils, because you didn’t want the massive expanding wars, you didn’t want meltdown of the climate, you didn’t want the massive Wall Street bailout, you didn’t want the offshoring of our jobs — these were all things delivered to us signed, sealed, and delivered by a Democratic White House with two Democratic houses of Congress.”

The Wall Street Journal writes that “Americans are growing curious about their third-party options, search data and recent polls show, as both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump look likely to reach the general election as the most unpopular presidential nominees in modern history. … Stein is considered the front-runner for the Green Party nomination.” Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant writes at Jacobin, “Jill Stein’s Green Party campaign will likely offer the strongest left challenge in November and deserves the broadest possible support.”

Jim Condit, Jr., the Green Party nominee in the June 7 special election in Ohio’s Eighth U.S. House district and also for the seat in the November general election, will not be on the November ballot after the Butler County Board of Elections determined that he voted in the Republican presidential primary in March. Ohio law states that a candidate voting in a primary as a member of a political party different from the party that nominated the candidate forfeits the nomination. However, Condit remains on the ballot as a Green in the special election in two weeks.

According to WHIO-TV in Dayton, Condit “admitted that he is ‘a terrible fit’ for the Green Party.” He added, “It’s such a bad fit that in a way I’m relieved.” Greens in the district say they will select another nominee.

The Green Party of the United states has responded to Stephen Colbert’s repeat of the “Nader spoiled” accusation during his May 18 CBS Late Show.

GPUS Co-Chair Paul Pipkin said, “When you look at the actual numbers in 2000, it becomes clear that the spoiler allegation is the Democratic equivalent of the right-wing fringe belief that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.” Fellow co-chair Audrey Clement added, “The biggest reason for Al Gore’s loss is that he ran a weak campaign, failing to win even in Tennessee, his home state. 13% of Florida Democrats voted for Bush instead of Gore — far more than those who voted for Ralph Nader — and nearly half of the state’s Democrats stayed home on Election Day.”

The Greens also corrected Colbert on his claim that Sen. Bernie Sanders “is now being courted by the Green Party to join their ticket” and noted that it would be nearly impossible, legally and logistically, for Mr. Sanders to launch a new campaign after the Democratic nomination. The party did say it has “invited Mr. Sanders to help promote the Green Party as a permanent independent alternative to the two corporate-money parties. Mr. Sanders has not responded.”

Vice writes about the Green Party’s efforts to take advantage of the Bernie Sanders movement, writing that much of the talk at the Left Forum in New York this week was about what Sanders supporters should do in November.

When Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein “took the podium on Sunday, chants of ‘Jill, not Hill!’ erupted in the lecture room. She laughed, and then quickly added, ‘Yeah, you’re not kidding.'” Stein continued, “People say to me sometimes, ‘So you’re OK with getting Trump elected?’ And I say, ‘I will be horrified if Donald Trump gets elected, and I will be horrified if Hillary Clinton gets elected.’ And I’m most horrified by a political system that gives us two lethal choices and says, ‘Pick between them, and that’s it.'”

Stein added, “We are right now in the polls where Bernie Sanders was about six months ago. So don’t for a minute accept the propaganda that we are powerless, or irrelevant in this process or discussion.”

Meanwhile, The Casper Star-Tribune reports that “members of the Wyoming Green Party are planning a petition drive” to put Stein “on November’s state ballot as an independent candidate.”

The Baltimore Sun quotes Baltimore Green Party mayoral candidate Joshua Harris on the not guilty verdict in the trial of Officer Edward Gero in the death of Freddie Gray: “Today, Officer Nero was found not guilty on all charges. I thank Judge Williams for doing his job and applaud the SAO for pursuing the case. While I respect the legal process, I am aware that there are systemic and structural problems with race, class and economic disparity that extend far beyond this trial. It is those issues that have created the conditions for us to be at this point. Sadly, not much has been done in the 1 year since the unrest to begin to address these disparities. These are conversations, evaluations and work that must be done far beyond the pursuit of justice in a single trial and should be focused on equity. I am focused, committed and proactively doing the work needed to ensure structural change happens. Our city and its justice system will and should work for every citizen. My platform that will be released in the coming weeks, on public safety, agency transparency and accountability will offer changes that can be made to move our city forward.”